In IDC’s report released today covering worldwide tablet market for the third quarter, the research firm notes that the market as a whole continues to grow thanks to strong growth from Android tablets. Apple shipments remained steady during the quarter compared to last year at 14 million units in Q3, but its share of the market drops from 40.2% last year to just 29.6% this year as Samsung, Asus, Lenovo, and Acer all post significant growth for the quarter compared to the same quarter last year.

Samsung is up from 12.4% last year to 20.4% of the tablet market in Q3 2013 (a 123% increase), while Asus is up 53.9% to 3.5 million units, Lenovo sold 2.3m (up 420.7%), and Acer recorded 1.2M (up 346.3%):

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Samsung once again secured the second position with shipments of about 9.7 million units. The company, which owes a measure of its tablet success to its ability to bundle them with other successful Samsung products, such as smartphones and televisions, grabbed 20.4% of the worldwide market. ASUS, which makes the Nexus 7 for Google, shipped about 3.5 million total units during the quarter for a third place finish and 7.4% market share. PC powerhouse Lenovo moved into the number four tablet spot with shipments of 2.3 million units and a 4.8% share. Finally, Acer rounded out the top five with 1.2 million units shipped and a 2.5% share. Notably, vendors from outside the top five were responsible for over one third of the shipments in 3Q13. IDC tracks dozens of tablet vendors, and this quarter “Others” represents a combination of major vendors (such as Amazon, Microsoft, HP, and Dell) and lesser-known, so-called white box vendors that typically sell ultra-low cost Android devices at often unsustainably low margins.

Making up the rest of the market, around 35.3%, is the other category with 16.8M units during the quarter. Those tablets consist of many unauthorized and inexpensive Android tablets as well as tablets from Amazon, Microsoft, HP, and Dell.

About the Author

Jordan writes about all things Apple as Senior Editor of 9to5Mac, & contributes to 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, & Electrek.co. He also co-authors 9to5Mac’s weekly Logic Pros series and makes music as one half of Toronto-based Makamachine.

US has 350 million people. EU has 550million people. Asia has 4.3 billion people.
In Asia you can find a ton of tables for about $60USD. People can afford that.
Apple has no intention of competing with those products, they will quickly turn the marketshare numbers around in their favour. What does this mean for Apple? Not much, as developers primarily focus on IOS. That´s where the money is, and that´s where you make the most. It does not matter that there are ecosystems with 5 times as many users, when none of them can afford to buy an app or in-app purchase anything. Except for Google of course, they get more people to monazite private data in exchange for advertisements.

Apple does not focus on marketshare, what it does focus on is having the best and most rich ecosystem. They are prevailing. Whenever an Android user can afford to move up the food chain, they come to Apple. They instantly get more quality apps, safer OS and a more smooth experience (less touch lag). Being on top allows you to innovate at a much higher rate. You can design more complex solutions requiring more advanced hardware. I feel we have only just begun to see Apples development in the ecosystem. They are going for much more advanced software and services. A few android trolls might shrug of 64bit as gimmick and only for 4GB+ benefits, but they are solely mistaken. The apps created 2014-> won´t be easily migrated to cheap 32bit android platform. It will require immense power to work well. And here lies Apples bet on the future. They are certain that their platform will enable not yet seen advanced mobile apps that will blow our minds.

I´m siding with Apple on this, they´re leading the way right now, and it will be awfully hard for their competitors to copy their way going forward.

And that’s why Apple is doomed with its “Post-PC-ERA” crap. Apple will never survive with the 1970s “let’s be Mercedes Benz” concept. Mercedes had to go mainstream to sustain. So did BMW, so did a ton of other elite brands. Apple will be utterly replaced by Android in all things mobile / tablet. I’d recommend getting back to software and hardware innovations, and release ALL the products on the Windows / other platforms.

It’s insane how similar this situation is with the one Apple faced against Microsoft

Apple made something really cool, dominated for a few years.
Company X comes along and makes competing software and licenses it out to manufacturers.
Over time they surpass Apple in market because of the sheer number of people making hardware.

Google took a page outta the Microsoft book, and there is no denying they saw great success because of it. Ethically tho, it just doesn’t seem right. Capitalism *shrug*

I got a tablet last year (brand irrelevant to comment) and I used it like twice. I find the format to be very awkward. Its hard to hold with one hand and type, hard to hold or prop up to watch movies, and feels extremely limited in functionality. Its like a email tool that is too hard to type on, a media player that is too hard to hold, and a email browser that has to sit on my lap and have me stare straight down at it until my neck gets stiff and I bust out a laptop.

The solutions to this is to buy a cover that has a stand and keyboard integrated, but at that point why not use a cheaper chromebook; same battery life, same boot time, less heat, lighter.